Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get On with Life

People with borderline or narcissistic personality disorders have a serious mental illness that primarily affects their intimate, personal, and family relationships. Often they appear to be normally functioning at work and in public interactions, and narcissists may even be highly effective, in the short term, in some work or social situations. However, in intimate relationships, they can be emotional, aggressive, demeaning, illogical, paranoid, accusing, and controlling - in the extreme.

When you have difficulties managing your emotions, it can feel like you're losing control of your whole life. Anger, hurt, grief, worry, and other intense feelings can be overwhelming, and how you react to these emotions can impact your ability to maintain relationships, succeed at work, or even think straight! If you find it difficult to understand, express, and process intense emotions - and most of us do - this book is for you.

The High-Conflict Couple adapts the powerful techniques of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) into skills you can use to tame out-of-control emotions that flare up in your relationship. Using mindfulness and distress tolerance techniques, you'll learn how to deescalate angry situations before they have a chance to explode into destructive fights. You'll discover ways to manage problems with negotiation, not conflict, and to find true acceptance and closeness with the person you love the most.

In his audiobook, entitled Cognitive and Dialectical Behavior Therapy Unleashed, author James Ashley covers in detail how two types of therapies, cognitive behavior therapy and dialectical behavior therapy, can be utilized to produce a more effective thinking process for the individual--one that leads to more favorable and positive results and the resolving of this inner turmoil.

Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

Although relatively common, borderline personality disorder (BPD) is often overlooked or misdiagnosed by therapists and clinicians and denied by those who suffer from it. If you were raised by a BPD parent, your childhood was a volatile and painful time. This book, the first written specifically for children of borderline parents, offers step-by-step guidance to understanding and overcoming the lasting effects of being raised by a person suffering from this disorder.

Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: Memoir of a Borderline Personality

An honest and compelling memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet is Merri Lisa Johnson’s account of her borderline personality disorder and how it has affected her life and relationships. Johnson describes the feeling of "bleeding out" unable to tell where she stopped and where her partner began. A self-confessed "psycho girlfriend," she was influenced by many emotional factors from her past. She recalls her path through a dysfunctional, destructive relationship, while recounting the experiences that brought her to her breaking point.

Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl

Stacy Pershall grew up as an overly intelligent, depressed, deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, population 1,000. From her days as a 13-year-old Jesus freak through her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited memoir chronicles Pershall's journey through hell and her struggle with the mental health care system.

Everyone thrives on love, comfort, and the safety of family, friends, and community. But if you are denied these basic comforts early in life through a lack of physical affection or emotional bonding, you may develop intense fears of abandonment that can last well into adulthood - fears so powerful that they can actually cause you to push people away. If you suffer from fears of abandonment, you may have underlying feelings of anger, shame, fear, anxiety, depression, and grief.

Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

A source of healing and inspiration for millions, this modern classic spent over three years on the New York Times best seller list and made codependency a household word. Codependent No More contains dozens of real-life examples, personal reflections, exercises, and self-tests to help you along the road to recovering your own life. For anyone struggling with a relationship involving alchoholism or other compulsive behaviors, this program points the way to healing and the renewal of hope.

The psychopath carefully selects the most indifferent and heartbreaking way imaginable to abandon you. They destroy you as a way to reassure themselves. Psychopath Free will help you out of the darkness so that you can begin making better choices that will forever alter the course of your life. So say farewell to love triangles, cryptic letters, self-doubt, and manufactured anxiety. You are no longer a pawn in the mind games of a psychopath. You are free.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist

Should I Stay or Should I Go? is a survival manual, a guidebook, and a shot of reality. Some people will never change, and kissing frogs is the stuff of fairy tales, not real life. The Beast never turns out to be a nice guy (or gal). This is a book that breaks down what mean people do to us, how they do it, and what we can do to survive.

Darren E from Toronto says:"This should be your Primary Guide dealing with a Narcissistic Relationship"

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring - specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust. He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including neuro feedback, mindfulness techniques, play, yoga, and other therapies.

Publisher's Summary

People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) experience such violent and frightening mood swings that they often fear for their sanity. They can be euphoric one moment, then despairing and depressed the next. There are an estimated 18 million sufferers of BPD living in America today - each displaying remarkably similar symptoms:

A shaky sense of identity

Sudden outbursts of anger

Oversensitivity to real or imagined rejection

Brief, turbulent love affairs

Intense feelings of emptiness

Eating disorders, drug abuse, and other self-destructive tendencies

An irrational fear of abandonment and an inability to be alone

For years BPD was difficult to describe, diagnose, and treat. But with this classic guide, Dr. Jerold J. Kreisman and health writer Hal Straus offer much-needed professional advice, helping victims and their families understand and cope with this troubling, shockingly widespread affliction.

This completely revised and updated edition includes information on the most up-to-date research that has opened doors to the neurobiological, genetic, and developmental roots of the disorder - as well as the connections between BPD and substance abuse, sexual abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, ADHD, and eating disorders - making it a vital reference for understanding and living with BPD.

What the Critics Say

“This book belongs on the bookshelf of patients, their friends and family, and for all those who help in their healing.” (Randi Kreger, author of Stop Walking on Eggshells and The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder)

If you could sum up I Hate You - Don't Leave Me in three words, what would they be?

InsightfulClinicalHelpful

Any additional comments?

This is a great book for anyone who has a loved one who struggles with BPD. This book seems to target an analytical mind but is also very helpful to a layman person. The book is so packed full of useful tools to use I had to read it twice. In fact I found some of it so helpful I wrote it down so I could memorize and reflect back at my leisure. Just a great overall book.

It was a good auidiobook and keep in mind this is 1 perspective. This illness needs much further study and a new name that carries less stigma! On the Borderline of... total craziness? This book gives a good basic summary of what a person who has this illness might have struggles with on a daily basis.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

The best is that this is a broad view on this illness and covers a good amount of information for someone who has little knowledge of this complicated illness. The author mentions stigma, but then like many doctors and nurses, etc, calls those who suffer, "Borderliners" or "Borderlines." Sorry, but I don't think anyone wants to be called a cancer or canker or other "names and labels."

People who suffer with an illness or suffers from - BPD is appropriate. You are NOT your illness. And like in the old days, they diagnosed women who suffer with mental illness - Hysteria, and now we actually have scientific names for specific illnesses like Post Partum Depression, or Bipolar I and II. I hope that one day the DSM has a better name for Borderline Personality Disorder. Sounds terrifying to say the least. Who would want to admit they have THAT!

This book is a good start, and much more info is being looked into thankfully as time goes by.

Which scene was your favorite?

More specific would be a chapter or topic. I like that the author identifies movies that have suggested a character had this illness. "I am dancing as fast as I can," "Memento," "Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf." I watched "Dancing as fast as I can." I could really relate to the character in that movie. It was odd seeing Joe Pesce out of his usual roles in this movie and I call her, "the mom from Footloose," Diane Weist!

Did I Hate You - Don't Leave Me inspire you to do anything?

I had to look into this book because so many others I talk to who are care providers or patients mention this book and it is highly rated. I think this book is really informational in a general sense. Much more research needs to be done with this illness, but it is a good read for those who don't understand Borderline Personality Disorder and keep in mind this is 1 perspective.

Any additional comments?

More books on this topic! More RESEARCH and more Funding $$$, Less STIGMA and less horror films with preconceived ideas that women, and YES, men who suffer with this illness are out to get you! These are very sensitive people with emotional scarring - not a bunch of criminals or killers. Compassion!

This book was a little too technical for me and maybe it would serve me to get a written version. It does a great job explaining the disorder and its extremes. It's definitely not a "light" read (listen)

This book is not for the family member or friend learning how to deal with someone with BPD. There were a handful of chapters with case studies of individuals with BPD. There were a handful of chapters about treatment, pharmacological and therapeutic methods. It dives into the trauma associated with BPD which is not really a surprise given the myriad of other disorders one could form from childhood trauma, this is just one of them. There was not one chapter on learning how to deal with the BPD's tantrums. The only information included was what the spouses were doing wrong when faced with drama; not what you can do right or make things easier on yourself. This book is probably very enlightening for the person with BPD. But is was a bit decieving in its title and synopsis of how to deal with one. Don't buy this book if you do not have BPD.

Very helpful for understanding BPD. Great chapter on the medications. I will probably go back to it many times. Lots of good information. Kind of dry. My mind kept wandering. Could only do a little at a time.

This book provides a very illuminating and accessible overview of BPD. The audiobook is excellent as well. I would recommend this to anyone looking to better understand borderline personality disorder.

as other's have mentioned this book seems more for the psychologists not familiar with BPD. Although there are a few helpful tips on dealing with BPD I can't recommend this book. You can find better advice online.